everyone is a pedestrian

Toronto now has an irreverant publication that encourages its citizens to take back the streets and alleyways, restoring a bit of the humanity that's been lost. You can view some articles online at spacing. I saw this in the Toronto Star.

combating urban sprawl with brownfield development

Development of vacant or abandoned properties in urban areas is one of those strategies that planners try to encourage because it often has strong possibilities for smart growth. Brownfields are often close to public transit, within walking distance of employment areas, have reduced parking requirements, and use available capacity of roads, sewers and water supplies. With these benefits to municipalities, why is there such resistance and continued development of prime agricultural land throughout North America?

power to the people

I guess the Ontario government doesn't want a repeat of last August's power blackout, but they are facing a severe supply shortage. So on June 15 they announced the proposed formation of the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) and the Conservation Bureau (CB), under the auspices of the Ontario Electricity Restructuring Act, 2004. The OPA will work on the supply side, while the CB will tell us how to reduce consumption. A report in Saturday's Globe & Mail panned these new bureaucracies, partly because they do not move us any closer to a market-based electricity supply. The OPA will likely be keen to sign long-term contracts with suppliers, because that is what business wants for stability and ROI for large-scale natural gas generating plants. The Globe suggests that, to avoid potential embarrassment, the OPA would rather over-supply than under-supply, and the terms of the contracts may over-price electricity to attract investors. It's also likely to continue to entrench reliance on non-renewable power supplies. One day we'll wake up to the truth that it's going to take time to wean ourselves from fossil fuels, and that we should have started long ago. The earlier we start, the easier it will be later. [Update: As reported June 25 in the Toronto Star, the OPA will also be negotiating contracts for power generation from renewable sources. The province sought proposals from bidders, and their target for renewable energy of 5% of capacity by 2007 may well be exceeded. These projects will help compensate for the closure of all coal plants in the province by 2007, which currently make up 25% of capacity, or 7,500 megawatts.]

Harper doesn't understand transportation impacts on the environment

According to a Conservative Party press release of June 9, 2004, Stephen Harper "pledged to help relieve urban traffic congestion, a contributor to smog, through a transfer of gas tax revenues to provinces and municipalities to build roads and highways..." The Canadian federal government candidate appropriately links traffic with smog, since ground-level ozone, the main constituent of smog, is formed by the action of sunlight on NOx and VOCs - and it has been estimated that road vehicles are responsible for about a third of NOx emissions. [Source: Canada's 1995 Criteria Air Contaminant Emissions Inventory, quoted in Background Paper for a Post-Kyoto Transport Strategy by Richard Gilbert.] Unfortunately he is misguided in thinking that building more roads will reduce emissions.

when in Rome...

I had been thinking of using a solar chimney to draw hot summer air up through our house, bringing cooler air in through a vent in the basement; but I had no idea that the Romans were doing this so long ago. [courtesy of Rebecca's Pocket] I think I'll try this in some form or another.

[Update: Just got The Energy Saving House out of the library, and it includes this as an effective house-cooling strategy. The 'Provencal well' should able to lower the interior temperature of a house by 3 to 5 degrees with no mechanical aid.]

bio diesel home brew: add liberal doses of can-do spirit

Got a hankering to brew your own bio diesel? You too can build your own renewable filling station. Here's how.

transportation influences urban development

Just in case you were doubting the power of public transportation to shape cities, here are some thoughts on Toronto's commuter rail service. In 1967, the Government of Ontario started operating its commuter rail service focused on Toronto's downtown core. By 1991, GO Transit was bringing more than 30,000 people from outlying suburbs into the downtown core in the peak hour. That's equivalent to 15 lanes of freeway capacity. If we assume that people decide where to live and work independently of choosing their mode of travel to work, then we might have to believe that, without the GO Transit service, those 30,000 commuters would now be fighting to make their way to work on the congested highway network - or else downtown simply would not have grown. (GO Transit has continued to grow steadily, carrying 44.8 million riders in 2002.) A more plausible hypothesis is that people consider their commute in choosing where to live and work, and that GO Transit has influenced development patterns. It has facilitated growth in downtown employment and provided a wider range of options as to where these workers live, thereby acting as a stimulus to growth in the housing market in outlying regions of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Every five years a household telephone survey is carried out in the GTA (the Transportation Tomorrow Surveys), and the results support the hypothesis that many people who are moving to outlying regions continue to commute into downtown Toronto. The regional municipalities recognize this, and are pushing for expansion of the GO Transit service to outlying areas. However, a shortcoming of this service is that it is focused on the downtown core, and does not serve other development nodes and corridors - which is one reason why the regions are also clamouring for expansion of the highway system. What we need is a few other strong urban nodes that can be served by high levels of transit service, as I have said before.

when cities grow, somebody's gotta pay

Just like businesses, cities are faced with the challenge of financing growth. In theory, municipal income should cover the costs of building the roads, sewers and other services needed to accommodate growth. In practice, this doesn't always happen. Politicians are often squeezed between developers who say that the market only wants low-density residential development, and the residents who cannot or will not pay the rates and taxes that are needed to pay for the infrastructure they use. The political response to these and other pressures determines whether or not growth patterns are sustainable. The deteriorating situation in many expanding cities is evidence that low density sprawl cannot be sustained with current financial strategies.

the driver's rule: I'll drive, you pay

Transportation planners have long railed against planning practices that have brought the automobile to the pre-eminent position it now holds just about everywhere. The costs are extensive, and are placing an increasingly untenable burden on municipalities. Here's a little gem from 1985 that lists a few of the costs that are rarely noted.

green roofs - the last urban frontier

Here's a picture of Toronto City Hall's green roof. The new University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) also has a green roof on one of its buildings to go along with a geothermal well to reduce fossil fuel dependence.